In today's competitive markets, organizations need to make quick business decisions (e.g., identifying opportunities, strategy and market advantages) based on constantly changing conditions. Collecting, analyzing and displaying the data are integral parts of making such decisions. However, as the volume of data that an organization collects, analyzes and displays is increased, it becomes more difficult for the organization to make quick and accurate decisions. Even after the large volume of data is collected and analyzed, it is still challenging to display this data to a manager of the organization in an easy to understand and visually pleasant way.
Online analytical processing (OLAP), multidimensional data models and relations database models have improved the way organizations view the data by summarizing the data from the organizations database. However, even with these models managers of organizations are not always provided with easy to use and interactive methods to view and browse data that provides a good picture of the organizations positions or capabilities.